Spoilers in the… pictures?

Submitted by esbforever t3_10pyyjq in books

This is a new one for me. Currently reading Red Notice, a true story of a western investor in Russia whose colleague apparently gets murdered. Captivating read so far.

So I’m about halfway through the book, and nobody’s been murdered yet. As is often the case halfway through a non-fiction book, we get to the pictures montage. First page is his family, very cute. Second page is the murder victim. What?!

I’ve never seen this before and I can’t believe it passed the editing stages. I’m really annoyed! Would you be?

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petereeflea t1_j6mus6x wrote

Yes. Why would anyone do that? Is it who you thought it would be?

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Jack-Campin t1_j6n7ftl wrote

If you ever get a copy of Charlotte Roche's Wetlands you'll need to forget about the avocado on the front.

And complain to Dickens about the cover of the 1859 edition of A Tale of Two Cities. The ending is right there in the middle.

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LackadaisicalWolf t1_j6nq63h wrote

Isn't Red Notice a nonfiction book? I'm pretty sure it isn't a spoiler if it's nonfiction.

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esbforever OP t1_j6nzn1j wrote

Replying to LackadaisicalWolf (#1,670,121)

I think it’s more that it was clearly inadvertently spoiled by a poor publishing decision. You can debate the nature of a “spoiler” but either way there is no way the author intended this. Would you agree?

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fragments_shored t1_j6oh89x wrote

This has a lot to do with how books are printed and bound - it's typically cheaper and more efficient to print the photo sections (which often use a different paper stock than the rest of the book) and then bundle and bind those in the center of the whole book. So it's less a question of editing and more a necessary evil to minimize production costs and maximize profits on the sale price.

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